COLLEGE PARK, MD.- The Driskell Center announced the exhibition Dewey Crumpler: Life Studies, acclaimed contemporary artist Dewey Crumpler’s first show in Maryland. The exhibition will be on view at The Driskell Center gallery from September 10 through December 10.

Dewey Crumpler (b.1949) is a painter and teacher based in the San Francisco Bay Area. His work examines consumerism, globalization, and racial capitalism, pointing to the complex histories behind our present-day realities. Crumpler works in series, focusing on certain motifs that recur throughout his decades-long oeuvre. This exhibition homes in on two of these motifs–tulips and shipping containers. Though their connection is unexpected, both objects speak to volatile economic systems created and sustained by racist methods of disenfranchisement.

Dewey Crumpler: Life Studies features works on paper and large-scale mixed-media paintings. Selections from The Crumpler Collection, recently acquired by The Driskell Center archives, illuminate Crumpler’s creative practice as one of careful study and reflection. Assistant Director of Exhibitions & Programs, Dr. Abby Eron notes, “Dewey Crumpler’s work rewards close looking and critical thinking. Forms reveal themselves to be symbolic indicators of larger concepts, and details provide moments of wry humor. Crumpler’s work not only deepens our ability to see and interpret art, enhancing our skills as viewers, but his practice as both artist and researcher–highlighted in this show by his sketchbooks and studies–can help those of us creating art do so with greater meaning and purpose.”

Dewey Crumpler: Life Studies has been guest curated by Dr. Sampada Aranke, Associate Professor of Art History and Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University, in collaboration with The Driskell Center staff. Last year, Aranke presented a lecture at The Driskell Center on her recent book publication, and the Center is excited to welcome her back to campus. Andrew Kreps Gallery has generously loaned many of the works included in the exhibition. Prints from the Chainsaw Tulip series are on loan from the artist. The exhibition will be accompanied by a digital publication with essays by Dr. Aranke and Benjamin L. Jones, as well as full-color images of the works, courtesy of the artist, Andrew Kreps Gallery, and The Driskell Center archives.

Dewey Crumpler was an associate professor of painting at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1990 until its closure in 2022. His current work examines issues of globalization and cultural co-modification through the integration of digital imagery, video, and traditional painting techniques. Crumpler’s works are in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the de Young, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture; the California African American Museum; the Triton Museum of Art; and the Oakland Museum of California. Crumpler has received the Flintridge Foundation Award and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, as well as a Fleishhacker Foundation Eureka Fellowship. His most recent exhibitions include Art Basel Kabinett sector, Miami Beach (2022); Painting Is an Act of Spiritual Aggression at Derek Eller Gallery (2022); and Post Atlantic at Andrew Kreps Gallery (2023). He is currently represented by Jenkins Johnson Gallery.

Sampada Aranke’s research interests include performance theories of embodiment, visual culture, and Black cultural and aesthetic theory. Her work has been published in e-flux, Artforum, Art Journal, ASAP/J, and October. She is the recipient of the 2021 Art Journal award for her article "Blackouts and Other Visual Escapes." Her book, Death's Futurity: The Visual Life of Black Power (Duke University Press, 2023) examines the ways artists and activists reconceptualized death as a generative visual and political force in the Black Power era. Recent curatorial projects include Ayanah Moor: Undercover, Dewey Crumpler: Painting is an Act of Spiritual Aggression (organized with Jordan Stein and Dan Nadel), Mike Henderson: Before the Fire, 1965-1985 (co-curated with Dan Nadel), Dewey Crumpler: The Complete Hoodie Works, 1993-Present (co-curated with Joran Stein), and Arnold Joseph Kemp: I would survive. I could survive. I should survive.